


What He Had Tamed

by prettyvk



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe of an Alternate Universe, Moriarty is Alive, Past Child Abuse, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 07:20:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3125873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyvk/pseuds/prettyvk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim wakes up from a coma to find that Sherlock Holmes took away his empire, his right-hand man, and his son.</p><p>~</p><p>Alternate version of the events unfolding in part 2 of The James Holmes Chronicles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Waking Up To A Nightmare

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Risk of Absence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1595666) by [prettyvk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyvk/pseuds/prettyvk). 



> _"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."_
> 
> **The Little Prince**
> 
> ~~~
> 
> Alternate version of the events unfolding in The James Holmes Chronicles. What if it had been Jim after all?  
> First time trying to write Jim's POV. It's proving to be rather tricky.  
> This will not be anywhere as long as The Risk of Absence.
> 
> Written for Tessa <3

It’s the quiet, regular beeping that wakes Jim. That thing is obnoxious. It makes him want to grab his gun and shoot whatever it is that’s making that sound. And whoever is responsible for making it beep in the first place.

But when he tries to turn to slide a hand under the pillow and find his gun, he is shocked to realize he can barely move – and ‘barely’ is a generous overstatement. His fingers twitch against the sheet, just enough to realize how coarse it is.

So, reassessment. This is not his bed. He wouldn’t be caught dead sleeping in sheets with a thread-count that low. He can’t move much, and something is beeping next to him, some machine that is picking up speed right along with his thoughts – no, right along with his heartbeat.

Hospital, he thinks, and with some difficulty, conquers gravity and lifts his eyelids.

With jerky movements, he manages to move his head a little on the pillow, just enough to see the monitor next to his bed, and the wires that link him to it. There are other things attached to his body, bringing him water or nutrients, taking waste away. It’s absolutely loathsome. And more than a little humiliating.

He can hear voices out in the hallway, but while the door is open no one comes in to check on him. He really wishes he had a gun.

It takes him long, long minutes, but he finally manages to slip the heart monitor clip off his finger. The machines immediately start wailing and, as he thought, nurses and doctors rush in. They stop by the bed and look at him with various degrees of surprise as he blinks and runs his eyes from one to the other, searching and failing to find a familiar face. 

One of the women – the oldest here, doctor’s lab coat and an air of command about her – finally steps closer and shines a pen light in his eyes. Whatever she finds seems to satisfy her and she smiles at him.

“Welcome back to the land of the living, Mr. Moran,” she says.

If he could, Jim would burst out laughing. All that comes out of him is a breathless wheeze.

*

It takes him a couple of days to understand why they call him ‘Moran’. With his tongue still feeling odd in his mouth, he has trouble speaking, and writing is out of the question with his uncoordinated movements. Both things irritate him to no end, even more so because he can only get whatever information they think of giving him.

They call him Moran because that’s the name his ‘brother’ gave when he had Jim brought here. 

He hasn’t visited since then, though he continues to pay the bills and demanded to be kept informed by email. He’s been told already that Jim woke up.

Jim was in a coma after receiving a trauma of unknown origin to the back of his head. Well, unknown origin to them. Jim knows what must have happened. His plan, his carefully thought out plan, went awry, and the tiny – minuscule, really – amount of explosive at the back of his head that should have simulated a wound by expelling fake blood and brain matter dissimulated against his scalp misfired.

Stunt men do this every day for movies. How did Jim fuck this up so bad that it landed him in a coma? He can feel the small indentation under too-long hair when he reaches to the back of his head. It could have been worse, he supposes. He could have ended up a vegetable.

The reason he’s still so weak, and why he’ll need a fair amount of therapy, is only in part due to the brain injury. Mostly, he’s weak as a kitten because he’s been in a coma for a little less than three years.

He can only stare when the doctor gently informs him of that fact, having guessed it would be a shock. And what a shock it is indeed…

Three years spent in a bed, and while the thread count is pitiful, the care he received was the best England could offer; Sebastian would have seen to that.

Three years away from his empire. He supposes Sebastian tried to keep things afloat, but as much as Jim trusts him, he never told him all of his secrets. Some things Sebastian didn’t know about. God, but just thinking about the mess Jim will have to untangle is giving him a headache.

And then, of course, there’s James. Three years away from his son. What did Sebastian tell him to explain Jim’s absence? He’s always been a sensitive boy, even as Jim tried to toughen him up. He must have been upset.

But Jim is back, now. Daddy’s back. Everything will be just fine.

*

After a week, Jim can stand unaided, even if it’s not for long.

Two weeks, and he can shuffle down the corridors – although he needs a walker.

Three weeks, and he can almost – just almost – swim the width of the rehabilitation pool by himself. Another three and he swims the full length, though walking is still somewhat problematic.

He works hard, hard enough that the physical therapists comment on how they wish all their patients were like him. Maybe their patients would be, if they had as many things to do as he does.

Speech therapy goes well, too. At the month’s mark, he speaks in full sentences. The therapist is delighted. Jim, not so much. He sounds like Richard Brook, not himself – and he hates it.

*

Although two full month have passed and two more emails have been sent, there has yet to be any reply from Sebastian, or even an acknowledgment that he received the news that Jim is awake.

*

It’s only when he asks to borrow a phone that they think of giving him his personal effects. They’ve been kept in a bag, locked away all this time. The suit isn’t the one he was wearing that day on Bart’s roof; Sebastian must have brought a clean one in anticipation of when he’d wake up. There’s no ID in his wallet, of course, just some cash, and a credit card bearing no name, only a long number. No note or message for him. The phone’s battery is long dead, but someone finds a compatible charger. Jim stares at the plugged-in phone as though it’ll come back to life sooner because of it. Finally, the screen lights up, and finds a connection. So, endless mobile phone contracts do have some advantages after all.

He sends a one-word text to Sebastian’s primary number.

_Report._

No signature needed, not from this number.

He forces himself to wait for a full half hour. Sebastian has never taken longer than that to respond, not even that time when he’d been in a car wreck.

Foregoing text messages, he calls. The same number first, then in turn six different ones he has memorized; dummy numbers that Sebastian used on various missions. Five have been disconnected. Two just ring endlessly.

It’s not worry gnawing at him as he goes online and breaks into Sebastian’s email account. Why would he be worried? Jim only ever employed the best, and Sebastian was the best of them. Nothing happened to him. It’s just not possible. Nothing happened to him because if it did, it means something must have happened to James, too, and Jim will go straight to hell if he needs to, bring Sebastian back and kill him with his own bare hands if he let anything – anything at all – happen to his son.

The three emails sent by the clinic sit in the inbox, unread, along with various other messages.

The last email that was opened dates from five months ago. 

It’s a near thing, but Jim makes it to the bathroom before being sick.

*

Two days later, he’s still trying to decide what his next move is, how he’s going to find his son and restart his empire without his right hand when he’s still far from being one hundred percent himself. Walking straight between two metal railings without holding on to them for support is frustrating, but not as much as his lack of success in contacting anyone from his network so far.

It’s a name that almost causes him to trip over his own feet. One all too familiar name, uttered by a nearby patient who is talking to his own therapist.

“What did you say?” Jim asks loudly, ignoring the suggestion of his own therapist that they take a break. “What was that about Sherlock Holmes?”

The other patient looks at him, a bit surprised. Jim has been keeping to himself, ignoring group activities and ‘game nights.’

“Well, he’s alive,” the man says with a small shrug – or maybe that’s an involuntary twitch. “Was in a coma, they say, ten times longer than I was, but he’s running around solving crime again, so if he got better, why not us, huh?”

Jim doesn’t reply. He can’t, not right now, not when his mind is completely, utterly blank but for one image: Sherlock Holmes, alive and well, while Jim is stuck here, stuck in a body that doesn’t fully cooperate.

It takes him forever to get back to his room, with his therapist trying to get him to talk the entire way. He manages to close the door in the bloody man’s face and drags himself the last few meters to his bed, and the phone he left on the dresser. His hands shake as he types ‘Sherlock Holmes’ in the search bar. News article pop up, some dated a few weeks ago, others more recent. He reads one, two, and on the third the blood in his veins turns to ice.

There’s a picture.

Sherlock stands there, looking as stuck up as he always does in front of the press. John Watson is next to him, wearing the faintest of grins. It could be a picture from three years ago if not for the third person in the shot, standing on Sherlock’s other side, Sherlock’s hand resting on his shoulder.

James has grown, in the past three years, his face is leaner, his eyes darker, his hair a little longer, and he’s practically in disguise, wearing a twin of Sherlock’s dramatic coat. But it’s him, all right. Jim couldn’t fail to recognize his own son. And he also recognizes that wide, happy smile all too well.

*

For the first time since waking up, Jim gets out of his clinic-provided scrubs and puts on his suit. Tying the knot of his tie takes much longer than it should, but he grits his teeth and perseveres. In his mind, he can see James’ perfect tie, just peeking from under that ridiculous coat. And he can hear, ringing in his mind like a mocking laugh, the words that accompanied the picture.

The article calls James ‘Sherlock Holmes’ son’.

*

He discharges himself from the clinic despite medical advice to the contrary. 

A cab takes him back to London. It’s a three hour drive. Before agreeing to take him, the driver makes a point to tell him Jim will have to pay for the return trip, too. 

Jim doesn’t reply. He merely _looks_ at the man. Sweat pearls on the cabbie’s brow, he swallows nervously, nods, and starts the car.

*

What Jim wants to do is go straight to Baker Street and claim his son back.

He’s not so blind that he can’t see this would be a very, very bad idea.

According to the articles he read, he’s believed to be dead, which was, after all, the whole point of the plan. Revealing himself now would only lead to his incarceration. It wouldn’t help him get James back.

The second best thing he’d like to do is go home to Knightsbridge. But James might have given away that secret, and Jim can’t risk it either.

So, he gets the cab to leave him at one of his hideouts. It’s a small flat, sparsely furnished, in an area where the CCTV cameras are easily avoided. No one knew of this place, not even Sebastian. This was where Jim retreated, sometimes, for a few days, when he had to focus on something and couldn’t afford any distractions, not even those offered by a child always eager to learn something new.

In there, he boots up the dusty laptop and takes stock of his resources.

First things first: he needs information. And he knows just where to get it.

*

He forces himself to get home before he opens the envelope and pulls out three manila folders. It took the woman in Mycroft’s office five full days to get back to him. He continued his therapy on his own. He can walk a little better. He refuses to get a cane.

He opens the thinnest folder first and reads a list of cities and dates. It means little to him, so he moves on to an autopsy report, barely glancing at the pictures. Sebastian is dead. Someone broke his neck. The next page is a crime scene report for a warehouse in London. A handwritten note at the bottom says ‘Known criminal operating within several dangerous circles. An investigation would be a waste of time and resources.’ It’s signed MH. Suddenly, Jim is sure, absolutely certain whose hands wrapped around his tiger’s proud neck. Sherlock Holmes will die, some day, and he might very well die of a broken neck, too. It’d be fitting. The last page in that folder is a cemetery plot requisition form.

Jim closes the folder and picks up the next one. This one is Sherlock’s, and it’s considerably thicker, but Jim can’t be arsed to see what has been added there since the last time he took a peek. So he puts that aside, too, and picks up the last folder.

The first thing he finds is the copy of a birth certificate in the name of James Philip Holmes. He sees red and tears the piece of paper to shreds.

When he has calmed down a little, he looks at the next piece of paper, and his anger returns tenfold.

Why in hell would anyone think it necessary to run a full STD panel on a thirteen – no, still just twelve years old child? That every test result is negative is only a small consolation. 

The next document is even worse, if that’s even possible.

In the first few lines, Doctor Spencer, psychiatrist and psychotherapist, recipient of a few awards in his field, disclaims that everything he’s about to say is general information, possible patterns and outcomes, and that without meeting the child in question he can’t make an actual diagnosis, let alone suggest a course of action or treatment.

The three pages after that detail what to expect from a child who has been mentally, physically and sexually abused from age ten to thirteen.

Jim reads the document to the last line, feeling colder and colder. When he’s done, he goes to the kitchen. He pries the loose board beneath the sink off with his bare hands until his fingers are bloody and retrieves the gun hidden there.

Sherlock Holmes is a dead man; he just doesn’t know it yet.

*

Wrapped in a coat, scarf and hat, hiding behind glasses, he makes his way to Baker Street, arriving coincidentally right as the door to 221B opens, and out come Sherlock, John and James, the former already summoning a cab.

Jim should take aim, but he can’t take his eyes off his son. James is babbling something – Jim thinks he can read the words ‘Christmas’ and ‘presents’ on his lips, but his lip-reading is too rusty to get more than that from across the street.

He looks happy.

He definitely doesn’t look like someone climbing into a closed space with someone who put his filthy hands on him.

Jim lets the cab go without pulling the gun from his pocket. His hands are clenched tightly at his sides. He goes back to his flat, picks up James’ folder again, and finishes to read it.

Then he reads Sherlock’s, stopping when he gets to the obviously fake autopsy report – Molly’s work, he notes dispassionately. Some of the rest centers on bringing Sherlock back to life, with equally fake medical records and press releases about a years-long coma.

Jim reads Sebastian’s file again, this time paying more attention to what’s apparently a (somewhat incomplete) travel log. Then he puts it all down, closes his eyes, and breathes.

First, his initial assumption can’t be right. As protective of his little brother as Mycroft Holmes may be, he wouldn’t cover up child abuse. Neither would John Watson. And the possibility of Sherlock breaking his celibacy to abuse a child… No, it doesn’t make sense. Jim allowed his anger to take control and forgot to _think_. For now, he puts the anger away and works on the puzzle in front of him.

After Jim’s ‘death’, Sherlock faked his own suicide.

Sherlock knew of the snipers, so his priority would have been to eliminate those threats – including Sebastian.

Sebastian went on the run. Did he know who was on his heels?

More importantly, did he have James with him?

He must have. Jim’s orders were very clear.

“Take care of my son if anything goes wrong,” Jim told him before setting the plan in motion.

He didn’t believe anything would go wrong, but planning always means considering every eventuality, however unlikely.

That Sebastian would abuse James never even entered his mind.

But that’s what happened, isn’t it? He took James away from London, took him as he went on the run with a ghost trailing him… and took his childhood as well.

And if that wasn’t bad enough… He’d guessed. He never flat out asked – Jim would have beaten him bloody if he’d dared – but he’d guessed, that much was obvious from a few things he let slip over the years when Jim wasn’t well, when his head was more chaotic than usual, when the thought of _anyone_ touching him made him lash out.

Sebastian guessed, and he did that to James anyway.

A broken neck was a much too quick, much too painless way to die.

*

He gets drunk, that night.

The nightmares come anyway.


	2. Waiting

The next couple of weeks are spent planning.

Jim recruits new people; people who were never quite good enough to make it into his employment before, but everyone who _was_ good enough seems to have disappeared from the face of the planet. He suspects Sherlock had something to do with it, or Mycroft, or both.

He drills what’s to come into each team of four men. Twice, he has to put a bullet in someone when they won’t listen. The others are much more attentive after that, so it’s worth dropping down to three men in both cases.

The first step is to open his own grave. He’s there, that night. Until he announces his return, he’s fairly certain he doesn’t need to hide all that much.

He never knew who Sebastian had found to take his place on a slab in the morgue, but it must have been a really close match to fool Mycroft Holmes’ people. Then again, Irene Adler did fool him twice.

He has his men dispose of the body, and places an envelope in the coffin before having them bury it again. The note inside the envelope just says, ‘Did you miss me?’, which is also what the message that will start everything says – but they have a few more days until that. 

A few more days until his son turns thirteen.

*

At times, Jim wonders why he’s bothering going through all these steps rather than just removing his own son from Sherlock Holmes’ and John Watson’s hands. It wouldn’t be all that hard, not when the three of them are often out around town.

The thing is, Jim still doesn’t know what Sebastian told James about him. It might be a shock for James to see him alive. Whether the surprise would be good or bad is another question altogether. Jim knows what he’d think, if he were in James’ position today: he’d blame his father for what happened to him. And what better ‘fuck you’ than to take residence with his father’s enemy?

No, Jim can’t just kidnap him; James would probably run away, or at least try to, and that’d complicate everything. No, he needs to want to come back. And that’s what Jim’s plan will ensure.

*

Another night; another grave. Jim doesn’t go, that night. He waits for the body to be brought to him. He’s secured a cold chamber, to keep it until it’s time to start the show.

When he steps into the room, his breath rising in white puffs in front of him, the body bag rests closed on a metal gurney. He opens the zip, exposing the head, and has to fight back his gag reflex at the smell that instantly spreads through the room.

“Hello, Sebastian,” he says, dragging the zipper all the way down. “Nice to see you again.”

He read the autopsy report, but even so he can’t help but look at the neck, searching – and finding – traces of discoloration. His fists clench at his sides. He has quite a few memories of closing his hands around that thick neck, but always, always he released again before it was too late.

“You have no idea,” he says, very quietly, “how lucky you are that you died before I put my hands on you. You wouldn’t have enjoyed yourself this time. Not one little bit.”

How many times did he threaten to kill Sebastian? Or skin him alive? Or… idle threats, really, just to keep him on his toes. But today… today the threat is only idle because Sebastian is already dead. Today it’s not annoyance or boredom that runs through Jim, but anger colder than this icy room.

“I hope hell is real,” he says as he flicks open the knife he brought. “And I hope we meet again, Tiger. I really do, just so I can show you what a mistake you made touching _my son_.”

Later that night, he takes a long walk and drops the stained handkerchief and the bit of decaying flesh it contains in the Thames. The revenge is wholly inadequate, symbolic more than anything else, but he still feels a tiny little bit better. He wishes James had been there to see this.

*

He’d like to keep an eye on James himself, but it’d be too much of a risk – and too much of a temptation to reveal himself early. So, he has a couple of people rotating on surveillance duty. They bring him pictures of James on his way to Bart’s or Scotland Yard, James entering or leaving 221B, James in cabs, James out shopping with Mycroft Holmes, James standing behind the window, no more than a shadow and yet with a violin clearly visible in his hands.

Jim goes through the pictures every night, looking at them from the first to the last, always marveling at how much taller James is. He tries not to get too annoyed that his smiles seem warmer than Jim remembers them, especially when he’s talking to or looking at Sherlock. It’s just because Sherlock killed Sebastian and put an end to the abuse, he tells himself. Nothing more.

Two days before Christmas, the surveillance man sends him a text. They’re out of London, on their way south. They took suitcases with them. Should he follow?

After careful deliberation, Jim answers with a negative. Out of London, the risk to be spotted becomes too great. Besides, they’ll be back in a few days, Jim is sure of it.

* 

Christmas passes, just one more day like every other. Jim waits, and remembers a tree taller than James, and the presents beneath it. In his memory, Sebastian’s presence is carefully erased, so it’s just him and James on that Christmas morning. 

Being alone never bothered him before, but today, it does.

*

By the time December 27th arrives, Jim hasn’t slept in three days and he’s all but bouncing off the walls. He moved out of his tiny flat and into a larger house outside London, out of the way of CCTV cameras. The second bedroom is ready.

As the hours crawl by, he’s just as impatient as he was thirteen years ago, unable to do anything to speed the process along. At three fifteen in the afternoon, he’s in front of the television when his own image pops up. At the same time, his phone beeps – like every cell phone in the country.

He only cares about one phone, though, the blue phone he’s seen in James’ hand in a couple of pictures, the phone whose number is already programmed in Jim’s untraceable throwaway. He can’t contact James yet, it’s too early, but soon…

By the end of the afternoon, they’re back in London. Jim waits a little longer, imagining James’ expression as he opens the parcel and finds his birthday present, wondering if he remembers. Of course he remembers. Jim would bet his own life on it.

As night falls, he can’t wait anymore. He’d like to talk to James, but small steps. Keep to the plan. Make him come of his own accord. 

He sends a text. His first words to his son in three years. Coma notwithstanding, it feels like much longer than that.

_Happy birthday Jamie. Did you like your present?_

*

He waits, waits, waits for an answer.

It takes three more messages before James, long past midnight, finally texts back.

Jim’s next messages remain without reply.

*

The next day unfolds precisely as planned.

Except for the part where James goes riding while Sherlock and John Watson go look at an empty coffin.

Unexpectedly, hearing about that, watching a grainy video of his son on horseback send Jim in a blind rage.

That’s _theirs_. Horseback riding, occasional competitions, those were always treats, as much for Jim as they were for James. And now Sherlock Holmes has taken that from him, too.

How did he even know? Did James tell him? How much did he tell him? _Why_ did he tell him?

From the moment Jim realized where his son was, with whom he lived, he’s been wondering how much James has revealed about him, about what their lives used to be like. Jim always taught him to be very circumspect in front of strangers, but clearly he doesn’t consider Sherlock a stranger.

The question is, what does he see him as?

And what does he call him?

Not knowing for certain drives Jim crazy.

Imagining that James might call Sherlock ‘Dad’ or ‘Father’ is even worse.

*

He can’t stand not being there.

It’s stupid, he knows it, and he might be putting everything in jeopardy, but he just has to go, has to see James with his own eyes.

By the time he gets to London, night has fallen and he has word that Sherlock is on his way to the warehouse. Not much longer after that, a second message comes in: James and John Watson are going there, too.

Jim finds a nice spot on a roof, out of the way, where he won’t be spotted, too far to hear, but he’ll be able to observe. He watches Sherlock walk in, and glares at his back. Minutes later, he’s staring much more avidly at James, and watches him escape John Watson’s care to rush into the warehouse. Jim grins. That’s his boy, all right.

Later that night, James texts him first. Jim starts working on that apology.

*

Jim isn’t there to deal with the next two deaths. He would have liked to be, but he knows how angry he’d get if he faced the man who basically paid Sebastian to continue to abuse James, or the woman who let Sebastian have him in the first place.

He’d get angry, because they both had their orders, and they followed them to the letter.

He’d get angry – he _is_ angry – because blaming them, punishing them does not alleviate his own guilt in any way.

*

The next few days go as they’re supposed to, or just about. They find the nanny before the banker. That’s okay, it doesn’t change anything. Except for how slow it all seems to go.

Jim is bored out of his mind.

He’s got to be careful, now, can’t be out and about. He has to trust that he knows James – that he still knows him – and that it’ll all end up the way it’s supposed to. He’s just never been very good at waiting.

He keeps his phone, the one he uses to communicate with James, within reach at all times, but James very rarely texts him back, and even more rarely does he initiate a conversation. He hasn’t tried calling at all. Jim hasn’t tried either. He doesn’t know what he’d say if he did.

‘I’ve missed you’? ‘I’m sorry about what happened to you’? ‘If I could go back and change it, I would’?

Useless. All of it.

*

After the New Year, Jim gets the sign he’d been waiting for. James runs off from school, evades his bodyguards, and goes to what used to be their home. He can’t possibly believe that Jim is there, so he’s not looking for him, is he? So what is he looking for?

The answer comes with James’ next text message – a death threat. Jim beams at his phone.

His gun. That’s what he went to get, isn’t it? The gun Jim gave him, taught him to respect and to use without flinching.

He understands the power is in _his_ hands, not the Holmes brothers’, not even Jim’s.

It’ll end when James says so. But he didn’t tell Jim to stop, didn’t tell him to stay away. What he said was, don’t hurt anyone, or else. Which means, he’s ready to come home, now.

Jim calls the last team and gives the go ahead, making sure they understand they are not to harm the girl. It was a bit by chance that Jim figured out her role in this. He’d seen pictures of her arriving to the Baker Street Christmas party, and he knew Sherlock had taken James to Bart’s, where, presumably, they’d worked with her, but it only clicked when she hand-delivered a brightly colored package on James’ birthday. He’d told James about her, back then. And James, just eight years old at the time, hadn’t really understood Jim was only using her. He’d asked how nice she was, and when he’d get to meet her, and whether she’d come riding with them. A child’s questions. A motherless child’s interest. Jim is betting everything on the fact that this interest didn’t fade.

James’ next message makes it clear that betting on Molly Hooper was the right move.

*

Jim changes three times as he waits. From suit, complete with jacket and tie, to jeans and jumper, to slack pants and shirt, and finally back in the full suit. He can play Jim Moriarty or Richard Brook or any other persona he needs to be, but ‘Daddy’ was always the most difficult one to get a grasp on.

Finally, he hears a car in the driveway. He goes to the door, waits behind it until the light, hesitant knock, opens – and there is his son.

“Hello, Jamie. Welcome home.”

James blinks repeatedly, as though he can’t quite believe Jim is there. Jim feels rather the same way. After all these pictures, to finally see him here, in front of him…

He’d like to draw James in for a hug, but he isn’t sure how well that would be received. He invites him in with a gesture instead, and James finally steps forward, the plastic bag he carries brushing against the closing door, the sheep toy just peeking out of it. His expression is utterly blank.

“Aren’t you going to say something?” Jim asks, trying to hold on to his smile.

James blinks again and shifts ever so slightly, his shoulders suddenly more tense.

“Your men,” he says. “One of them hit Molly. You promised she wouldn’t be hurt but he gave her a black eye.”

It’s all Jim can do to keep his anger out of his voice. It wouldn’t do for James to think he’s angry at him, not now.

“Do you know which one it was?”

When James describes the man to him, Jim nods and pulls out his phone. He calls the leader of that team, and, without so much as a greeting, demands, “Kill Peterson. You can split his share between the rest of you.”

There’s a hesitation at the other end of the line, but Jim is more concerned by James’ flinch and suddenly startled look.

“Wait,” he says in the phone, and covers it with his hand as he asks James, “Isn’t that what you want?”

James turns very, very still. “Isn’t there…” He licks his lips and lowers his voice to finish. “Another punishment?”

Jim considers him for a little while before talking into the phone again.

“Nevermind that. Just put a bullet in his knee. And give him a black eye.”

He raises an eyebrow at James, who replies with the tiniest of nods. He waits for confirmation his order was received and pockets the phone again.

“I’m glad you’re home, James,” he says, his smile back to the front.

James looks around him before meeting Jim’s eyes again.

“Thank you, sir,” is all he says.


	3. Drowning and Burning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With many thanks for every comment and bit of feedback, they are much appreciated as i fumble my way through Jim's mind.

James is quiet as Jim shows him around the house.

Too quiet. It’s unnerving. He used to talk a lot, ask questions about anything and everything. He only was quiet when he knew he’d done something wrong.

Has he done something wrong? Or does he think he has?

“We’ll only stay here for a few days, a couple weeks at the most until I can secure safe passage.”

No answer at all.

“Aren’t you curious to know where we’re going?”

James is looking at his room, a carbon copy of the one on Knightsbridge, down to the books on the shelves – or at least, as close to it as Jim could remember.

“Would you tell me if I asked?” James finally asks, stepping forward and setting his bag on the bed.

“I’ll answer any question you ask,” Jim says – and actually means it.

As he pulls a book from the bag, James doesn’t say anything but he gives Jim a fleeting, incredulous look. Jim understands why, of course. Three years ago, there were things he didn’t explain; as smart as his son was, Jim wasn’t sure that ‘I’ll pretend to put a bullet in my own head’ would have gone down all that well. But at thirteen, there’s no reason to hold back anything anymore, especially if it helps break down James’ reserve.

While James goes around the bed to set the book on the shelf where it belongs, Jim steps forward, picking up the stuffed toy from its bag. He’d decided James couldn’t keep anything he brought with him, but the toy and the book are different. They’re part of their past, of their history together, and surely if James brought this it has to mean he remembers, too.

“That wasn’t your real birthday gift,” he says, turning the plush toy in his hands. “I just didn’t think a horse would have fit in that tiny flat.”

James’ eyes light up for a second, his mouth opens and Jim waits for the predictable questions, but nothing comes. Instead, that little gleam of excitement dies, replaced by wariness as James watches the toy in Jim’s hands. Why would he be wary now? And why would he try to hide that wariness, looking away again almost at once?

All it takes is for Jim to pay a bit more attention to the sheep to notice it feels heavier than when he bought it. His questing fingers touch something hard against the belly, right where a white thread hangs loose. Jim tugs on it, thinking he’ll find a phone. Instead, he pulls out what looks like a tablet – no, an ebook reader.

He double-checks the inside of the sheep to make sure there’s nothing else in there and drops the gutted toy on the bed.

“Clever,” he says, keeping his voice even. “I’m guessing you meant to contact Sherlock through this somehow? Or maybe it has a GPS tracker?”

He looks up at his son, and whatever is on his face causes James to flinch. He’s paler, all of a sudden, and very, very still as he replies.

“I didn’t know if it was really you. Sherlock kept repeating you were dead. I didn’t believe him but you said… you said to prepare for everything. If it wasn’t you… I didn’t want to be trapped again. Like I was with Sebastian.”

All it takes is that one word, and the growing anger inside Jim pops like a pricked soap bubble. Later, he’ll wonder if this all too casual reference to Sebastian was deliberate from James. For now, all he can do is look at the device in his hands; he’s not so stupid as to think that’s the only way out James came up with.

“I left Sherlock alone,” he says quietly, “because he did what I was unable to do at the time. He got you away from Sebastian. If you want me to keep leaving him alone, I suggest you don’t try anything as rash as running away. Dinner in twenty minutes.”

He leaves the room without waiting for an answer, and destroys the ereader before throwing something to warm in the microwave. When James comes down for dinner, he’s changed into one of the suits hanging in the wardrobe – although with no tie.

Dinner is a silent affair. James asks to be excused when he’s done, and disappears into his room for the night. 

Jim stands in front of that closed door for a long, long time, hands in his pockets, thinking of all the things he meant to explain, all the things he meant to ask. This is not what he imagined when he thought of getting his son back. He has no idea what he did wrong, and no idea how to fix things.

Funny how he can fix anyone’s problem for the right amount – anyone’s but his own.

*

Jim doesn’t sleep, that night. He has too much to do to sleep.

He makes sure his people are paid what he owes them – including what he owes the idiot who allowed James to keep that ereader.

The surveillance on Baker Street is still in place, and he keeps an eye on that, as well as on any suspicious activity coming out of Mycroft Holmes’ office. So far, they appear to be floundering with no real lead.

He’s also refining their escape plan. He has no doubt travel channels have been monitored for a few days already, so he has to be very, very careful. Once he and James leave the country, he wants to leave no trail whatsoever as to where they have gone. It will take some work, especially since his network is in tatters, but Sherlock wasn’t quite as thorough as Jim first feared.

He’s surprised, come morning, when James walks into the den where Jim has been working and brings him a cup of tea. He’s had enough bad surprises, lately, to appreciate the pleasant ones even more, even if James retreats out of the room again before Jim has done so much as take a sip.

*

Lunch is even quieter than dinner. Jim can't stand it, and he returns to his laptop after only a few bites.

*

Later in the afternoon, it’s music that draws Jim out of the den; or rather, individual notes, played slowly, each one allowed to echo and die before the next one rises. James showed no apparent interest when Jim pointed out the upright piano to him yesterday, but now he sits in front of it, pecking at the keys as though he’s never touched a keyboard before.

“Did you forget how to play?” Jim asks, stepping into the room. “I can teach you again.”

Or at least, he hopes he can. His own dexterity is not entirely what it used to be, although he’s been practicing while waiting for his plan to unfold.

Before he’s halfway to the piano, James proves to him that no, he won’t need extra lessons, far from it. A melody unfurls under his fingers, something he’s never heard before but hauntingly, achingly beautiful.

“I didn’t forget,” James says, quite needlessly, without looking up from the keyboard.

Rather than joining him, Jim crosses the room and sits on the sofa. He watches his son play, and wonders what’s going on in his mind.

“What was it called?” he asks, a little while later, when James’ fingers are still again.

For some inexplicable reason, color spreads through James’ cheeks and he doesn’t look at Jim when he replies.

“I don’t know if it has a name. It’s just something I heard.”

Something he heard. As good as he is on the instrument, he’d have needed to hear it at least a few times to memorize it like this. And even then, some parts seemed… not unrefined, maybe, but meant for strings rather than a piano.

Meant for a violin.

Jim doesn’t ask if that’s something he heard Sherlock play; he already knows the answer.

“I’ll make sure there’s a piano where we’re going,” he says instead, and adds in a neutral tone, “Will you want a violin as well?”

James peeks up over the top of the piano.

“May I have one?” he asks quietly. “Really? I’m not terribly good, but I was getting better.”

“We’ll find someone to give you lessons.” Jim is almost proud when he manages to speak without gritting his teeth. 

“Thank you, sir.”

 _Did you call him sir?_ Jim wants to ask – to snap, really. _Is that what you called him when he taught you to play? Or did you call him ‘Father’?_

He leans his head back, looks at the ceiling, and asks instead, “Whose idea was it for him to teach you the violin?”

A beat passes in silence before James finally replies.

“Mine. I couldn’t get a real piano, my room was too small, so I thought… But then I got an electric keyboard. It wasn’t the same as a real piano but it was better than nothing.”

That last part feels like an offering; at the very least, Jim takes it as such. Better than nothing, indeed.

Silence stretches between them, broken by bits and snatches of songs. Only a few beats at a time, never the full thing. It grates on Jim’s nerves, but he keeps quiet.

“You said…” James’ voice rises among the notes, slipping between them. “Yesterday you said I could ask questions and you’d answer. May I?”

When Jim makes a noise in his throat, James goes on, even more softly now.

“Where were you these past three years?”

Translation: why did you leave me in Sebastian’s clutches?

“In a coma,” Jim says, closing his eyes. “I woke up only a few months ago.”

“A few months?” James’ voice grows colder. “How many months is that?”

Translation: why did it take you so long to come get me?

“Enough to relearn how to walk and how to speak.”

The music stops. Jim can all but feel his son’s eyes on him. He keeps his own closed.

“Is that why you sound… different?”

Translation: is that why you sound like Richard Brook?

Jim swallows a sigh.

“Working on it,” he mutters, as annoyed with himself as he is with the reminder.

James starts playing again, this time from the start. Beethoven. It’s lovely, and even more so because he plays it all the way through.

When the music ends, Jim doesn’t move; he knows more is coming. They’ve been easy questions, so far. Less easy ones have yet to be voiced.

“How did you fall in a coma?”

Still not one of the hard questions—

“Sherlock said you shot yourself in the head.”

—but they’re getting there.

“He saw me do that, yes,” he replies, opening his eyes to look at James. “Or at least he thought he did. What he didn’t know was that the bullet was a blank, and that the blood was fake. I needed him to think I was dead. The whole plan hinged on that. But I made a mistake. I miscalculated. I got knocked out. And I only woke up three years later.”

Mindlessly, the same way he’s done a dozen, a hundred times since waking up, he reaches to the back of his skull and touches the small indentation there. On the other side of the piano, James watches every one of his movements. Jim crooks a finger at him and beckons him forward. When, slowly, he reaches the sofa, Jim leans forward, takes his hand. He leads it to the everlasting proof of his misadventure. While James explores the edges of the wound ever so carefully, Jim explains explosives and movie stunts, and admits, again, what was always so hard for him to say: he made a mistake.

When he pulls back, James doesn’t quite return to the piano. He takes a few steps through the room, turns to Jim again, walks over to the window but what he sees of the yard doesn’t hold his attention and he looks at Jim yet again. His gaze is harder than it was just a moment ago. That’s it, then.

“Sebastian said you told him to take care of me.”

Translation: did you know what he would do to me?

“I told him to keep you safe if anything happened to me. I never imagined you’d need to be kept safe from him.”

He knows it’s not enough; he knows he’s admitting to another mistake. Saying anything else would be a lie, though, even if the growing anger in James’ eyes feels like knives skinning him alive.

“But you knew!” James cries out, closing his fists at his side; his whole body is shaking. “You knew what he…”

He can see, right there in James’ eyes, the moment when it becomes too much, when the words escape him and he has to change tracks or risk crashing.

“He beat me before and you knew it and you still trusted him!”

Jim shakes his head. “You’re not angry because he beat you, James. Say what you mean. I knew he liked men and I asked him to take care of a little boy. Is that it?”

James holds his chin high, defiance inscribed in every line of his body, but he doesn’t say ‘it’s your fault’, even when he should.

“Sherlock likes men too” Jim says softly. “So does John Watson. So do I. Do you think any of us could do to a child what Sebastian did to you?”

“You have no idea what he did—” James starts, sneering.

It’s that sneer, more than anything else, that pushes Jim to his feet. James falls silent at once and takes a step back. Scared. Jim is scaring him. That’s not going to help anything, is it? Rather than going to him, Jim walks over to the cabinet by the wall, opening it to reveal the liquor bottles inside. He fills one glass with amber, pauses, pours just a couple fingers in a second one. Returning to the sofa, he cradles the full glass in his hand and sets the second one on the low table in the center of the room.

“I do,” he says, chasing the words with a sip of fire. “I know exactly what it was like.”

He can read it all on James’ features. Confusion. Understanding. Surprise. Denial. Anger. And in the end, the refusal to believe.

“You… what? No, not you.”

For all answer, Jim lifts an eyebrow. He takes another sip and lets James get to terms with what they’re talking about. No rush. They have time. It’s not like Jim is in any hurry to discuss this.

“You never told me,” James finally whispers, blinking very fast. All the anger seems to have drained out of him.

“I never told anyone,” Jim says with an affected shrug.

One step. One tiny step toward the table and the glass there; toward Jim.

“Why not?”

“Are you going to tell people? Watch them look at you differently? Pity you? When you have children, are you going to tell them?”

Never. It never occurred to Jim before today, before this very instant that he might ever tell James, of all people. But he has to, doesn’t he? He has to find some common ground with James, something to connect with him after all this time apart, and _this_ is what happened to James during that time. This is what Jim has to show he understands.

Another couple of small steps, stuttering like James’ voice.

“Who… who was it?”

“My brother.”

James stills. Under his frown, his eyes turn accusing.

“You said you don’t have a brother,” he protests, and he might just as well be screaming _liar_.

“I don’t have a brother,” Jim says calmly. “Not anymore.”

Logically, the next question should be about life and death, but James sidesteps it.

“How old were you?”

Any answer other than ‘too young’ is inaccurate, but James knows that already.

“I was younger than you are now. He was older.”

“How long…”

A lifetime.

“Four years.”

Two more steps and James reaches the table. He looks down at the glass, back at Jim, at the glass again, like it’s a trap of some sort. It’s not. Jim isn’t sure why he poured those two fingers. He’s not even sure he should have. All he knows is that some words need to be drowned or burned right out of someone’s mind.

Very, very slowly James reaches for the glass and picks it up, checking again that he’s not making a mistake. Only when both his hands are wrapped around it does he ask, “Why… why didn’t you tell your parents?”

Is that what he would have done, if he could have? Told Jim? Trusted him to make it stop, make it better, _fix_ it?

“My mother was dead,” Jim says around a mouthful of scotch. “My father blamed me because she died having me. All Philip would have need to do was deny it, and I’d have been punished for lying. As he liked to remind me.”

When James coughs, it’s hard to tell if it’s from the tiny sip he just took, or from what Jim just said.

“Philip?” He sounds outraged. “You named me after him?”

A smile tries to force its way to Jim’s lips, but they refuse to respond.

“I named you after my biggest strength first,” he says, “and what was my biggest weakness second. I figured you’d end up being an even bigger weakness. But one I wouldn’t mind.”

James’ frown deepens as he clearly runs all that through his mind again. Does he understand? Can he? He’s young still, maybe too young to get it. But he will, some day. He’ll realize that he is his own best ally, the one thing he can always count on no matter what. And he’ll learn not to fear the ghosts of his past anymore. Jim will help him get there if he can, but mostly he’ll have to find his own way to that point.

Still frowning, James takes another small sip – not even a sip; he’s just wetting his lips, really. He swallows hard anyway before asking, “So… if no one knew… why did he stop?”

He knows, already. He’s guessed, even if he doesn’t want to admit it to himself. That’s all right. Jim has no issue with the truth – and no issue with what he’s done.

“I made him stop,” he says simply, and of course it’s not enough.

“How?”

Too fast, too messily, with trembling hands and a terrifying fear, but in the end not one second of hesitation, not one shred of remorse.

“I took my father’s hunting knife and hid it under my pillow. I warned him the next time he sneaked into my room. He didn’t listen.”

There’s no surprise in James’ eyes, and it’s not a question that passes his lips, barely louder than a breath.

“You killed him.”

Not a question, so Jim doesn’t reply. He takes another sip from his glass, and on the other side of the table – it might as well be on the other side of the country – James does the same. He only coughs up a little this time.

“How old were you then?” he asks next.

Older than a number. And yet still a child. Very much like James is today. 

“Twelve.”

“And you didn’t get in trouble?”

Would it have changed anything if he had? If he’d been forced to confront what he had done and what had been done to him, to talk the way he’s making James talk now – because yes, they’re talking about Jim, but every syllable is about James, too. Would he have been a different person in the end? Someone who didn’t have a professional and sexual relationship with a killer he didn’t know as well as he thought he did? Someone who didn’t try to fake his own death and doing so allowed terrible things to happen to his son? Jim has never wanted to be anyone other than who he is, but if he had been different—

He drowns that train of thought in another mouthful of scotch.

“My father covered it up. We even moved to England for a while. He couldn’t let people know one of his sons was a rapist and the other a murderer. It didn’t matter what we’d done, just what people would think.”

Clutching the glass with both hands, James starts moving again. More small steps that take him around the table and to the sofa. He perches himself at the very edge of it, a bird ready to take flight again.

“I couldn’t do it,” he whispers, briefly looking at Jim before staring down into his glass again. “There was one time when I could have taken Sebastian’s gun. I could have killed him. And I wanted to, more than anything in the world. But I just… I _couldn’t_.”

Jim closes his eyes and thinks back of that icy storage room, of the cold, discolored corpse in front of him, under his knife.

“You survived him,” he says when he has control over his anger again. “That’s a victory in itself.”

James lets out a little huff of air that, maybe, in another time, another place, another life, could have been something like a laugh. 

“Sherlock said the same thing.”

Jim could laugh, too. Or he could hurl his glass at the closest wall. The pendulum swings wildly between both reactions, but he doesn’t move a muscle or say a word until it’s come to a standstill again.

“I’m not like you, you know,” James offers after a quiet eternity.

Jim reaches out with one hand; his son is far enough at the other end of the sofa that all he can do is brush the tips of his fingers to his shoulder. As small a gesture as it may be, it causes James to flinch anyway, and Jim drops his hand again.

“I’ve known that for a long time, Jamie,” he whispers, and finishes his glass in one long gulp.


	4. Hard Truths

For a moment, Jim’s words seem to hang over the room, heavy, stifling. He tries to escape them by leaping to his feet and returning to the liquor cabinet. It’s only when he’s there, when he has his back to the room, that James speaks again, each word little more than a whisper.

“I thought… that was why you had me stay with Sebastian. Because you were mad I wasn’t like you. That it was all my punishment.”

Jim’s fingers tighten on the bottle as he pours until his knuckles are white, until his hand is so unsteady that scotch splashes out of the glass as well as in.

“You think I wanted that for you?” he asks as calmly, as coolly as he can manage, his movements very deliberate as he sets the bottle upright again. 

He lifts the glass to his lips but doesn’t turn back to James, not quite yet; he’s not sure he can control his expression well enough right now.

“I don’t,” James says very fast. “Not anymore. But… I used to. I couldn’t understand why you’d leave me with him. He said all the time that you… you liked what he did. And that in the end I’d like it too and then I’d be just like you. So I thought… maybe that was your plan. You always have plans. When you went away, that time, you said it was all part of a plan.”

Even with the hesitations, it sounds like James is hurrying through all that, as though he’s thought the words to himself before, many times; as though they were bursting to finally be voiced.

Where to start? With what Sebastian said? Jim has no desire whatsoever to discuss with his son what he might like in bed, and it’s not about that anyway. What James is asking for is the reassurance that truly none of this was anything Jim planned, or wanted. And just the thought that James believed that at one point, even if he doesn’t anymore, is enough to make Jim’s blood boil.

“The plan,” he says, taking his glass back to the sofa, along with the bottle, “was to disappear, have everyone think I was dead, and take you abroad so you could go to school while I built up a new network without being as overt about it. I had fun, playing the Holmes boys, but in the end it made everything too complicated and I needed to start over.” After taking a long gulp of scotch, he adds, “It’s still the plan today.”

James turns his head to look at him. He looks a bit startled for some reason, though all he says is a quiet, “Oh.”

Noticing that James’ glass is almost empty, Jim gestures with the bottle.

“Here. Give me your glass.”

James glances at the glass in his hands, but rather than holding it out for a refill, he holds it in his lap.

“It’s okay,” he says quietly. “I’ve had enough.”

There’s a hint of guilt clinging to his words, like a metal edge rusted through. Why guilt? Why would he feel guilty about drinking alcohol? Jim never forbade it to him so…

Ah. Of course. 

Sneering, Jim takes another mouthful. The scotch burns his throat, but it doesn’t help calm his irritation.

“What a fucking hypocrite,” he mutters.

James startles at the words and turns a wide-eyed look to him. Jim makes a vague gesture with the same hand that still holds the bottle.

“Not you. Sherlock. How grand of him to get uppity about alcohol when he’s an addict.”

James’ eyes widen even more. Evidently the topic never came up before. This is going to be good.

“What do you mean?” he asks in a small voice.

With a shrug, Jim leans forward and sets the bottle on the table at his feet. 

“I mean he got high on drugs for more years than you’ve been alive. Cocaine, if I recall correctly. Heroine occasionally. He cut down when Watson moved in, but once an addict, always an addict. I wouldn’t be surprised if he still had a stash somewhere in that flat.”

It’s rather satisfying to watch James’ eyebrows knit up as he tries to work through the fact that his supposed _father_ isn’t quite as perfect as he believed. A small headshake; he doesn’t believe Jim. Nothing surprising there.

Nonchalant, Jim pulls from his pocket the untraceable phone with which he kept in contact with James and holds it out.

“Don’t believe me?” he says with a small smile. “Ask him yourself.”

James considers the phone with the same look of incredulity, like he thinks Jim will snatch it back if he reaches for it. Or maybe, again, like it’s a trap.

One thing Jim promised himself thirteen years ago was that he wouldn’t lie to his son, not if it could be helped in any way. He’s still not lying now. The truth will be much more effective in helping James move on from his time at Baker Street.

“Go ahead,” he says, still offering the phone to James. “You’ve got two minutes. Ask him about the drugs.”

He watches intently, and sees James’ eyes flick from the phone to Jim’s face and back before he finally sets his empty glass down and takes the phone. He holds it for a second in both hands and finally dials. It’s his own number, Jim realizes; interesting, though irrelevant right now.

The call is picked up almost at once. Jim doesn’t even try to pretend he’s not listening and mentally filling in the blanks.

“Hi. It’s me.”

_Where are you?_

James throws a quick look at Jim.

“I can’t tell you that. But I’m fine. Just fine, I promise.”

_Is he with you? Is he letting you call?_

“Yes. Yes. He’s here. We were talking. He said… I mean, I’d like to know… Can I ask you…”

There’s a pause. A long pause. James listens, biting his bottom lip.

“Please don’t,” he finally says very softly. “This was my choice. I’m sorry I lied to you and I’m sorry I had to drug you. Can you forgive me? Please?”

That’s… not what Jim expected to hear. Frowning, he sips absently on what’s left of his scotch.

“Thirty seconds,” he says dully, staring straight ahead.

“I’ve got to go,” James says. And then… “No, it’s not important, just… It was good to talk to you. I’m glad you’re not mad at me. Goodbye.”

He hangs up the call, then stares at the phone for a couple of seconds before he sets it on the sofa between Jim and him.

“Thank you,” he says quietly.

Jim grunts in reply.

“You didn’t even ask him about the drugs.”

“I didn’t need to. It doesn’t matter. Everybody does things they’re not proud of, don’t they?”

Jim doesn’t like the way James makes a point of meeting his eyes on those last words. He doesn’t like it at all. So when James asks to be excused, Jim sends him off with a wave of his hand. 

Once he’s alone, he starts to pour himself another drink but sets it down and picks up the phone instead. He sends a text message, typing with furious jabs of his fingers.

_He’s MINE. Don’t ever forget that.  
JM_

After he presses send, he stares at the phone for a long moment before remembering he disabled the reception of messages. Scowling, he drops the phone to the floor and picks up his glass again.

*

Dinner, once again, is very quiet. Jim forces himself to sit through it and poke at the food he had delivered. He remembers eating Indian food with James before, and James asking a hundred questions about India, and whether they’d ever go there.

But James did go there, Jim realizes halfway through the meal. It was in the file, one line in Sebastian’s itinerary. He suddenly wishes he’d ordered a pizza.

Rather than excusing himself when he’s done, James remains seated, his fingers absently playing over his fork. Something’s coming. Jim waits for it. He’s not the most patient of men – he has no patience whatsoever, actually – but he distracts himself by thinking of all the ways he might have hurt Sebastian, had he still been alive. It’s fast becoming his favorite pastime. He’s up to seven hundred and sixty two different non-lethal options by the time James finally finds his voice.

“Can I… can I ask you another question?”

Leaning back in his chair, Jim gives a small nod. “Have I stopped you so far?”

James flips his fork over before putting both hands in his lap, where Jim can’t guess at his state of mind from his fidgeting anymore.

“Did you love my mother?” he asks in a sudden rush of words. “Is that why you keep sending her money even now?”

Of all the topics Jim had imagined might come up upon his return, this wasn’t one of them. James never, ever asked about his mother before. Jim used to be ready for those questions with careful answers lined up – not lies, merely slight obfuscations of the truth – but he never had to use any of them. And now… Now he’s taken by surprise, both by the subject and by what James seems to know already.

“How do you know about that?” he asks, playing for time.

“Mycroft,” James says simply.

Jim picks up his glass of water and wets his lips. He still doesn’t know what to reply.

“Of course,” he mutters. “Rather impressive that he found her.”

“You haven’t answered,” James points out after a few seconds of silence.

The truth is, Jim doesn’t _want_ to answer. Had the question come up three years ago, he definitely wouldn’t have replied. But things are so fragile with James right now, it’d be a mistake to lie just as it’d be a mistake to refuse to answer. He sighs softly. Things were much better when James didn’t ask about her.

“I’m not sure there is an answer,” he finally says.

“But you married her,” James presses on, showing that Mycroft Holmes was thorough in his search for details. “Doesn’t that mean you loved her? At least a little?”

Did it? Jim might have entertained the idea, once upon a time, when he was telling himself fairytales. But his ‘ever after’ was definitely nowhere near that path.

“She’s very smart, your mother,” he says, each word slow and measured. “More than smart. I like smart people. People that can challenge me. I thought…” He shrugs. “I don’t know what I thought anymore. That I could be normal, whatever that means. Get married, have a regular job, have kids. That’s what people do, isn’t it?”

The attempt to shift the conversation falls completely flat as James asks, “How long until you got bored?”

Before the wedding night was even over, but Jim can’t say that, can he? He tried so hard to convince himself he could make it work – could make _anything_ work, if he only tried hard enough. That was the one point in his life when he failed. She believed him, of course. He has no doubt whatsoever that she trusted he was the perfect loving husband even after he’d ‘died’. But he never believed it himself.

“I was ready to give up on the experiment by the time she got pregnant,” he says in the end, because it’s the truth, if not the entire truth. “I stayed. But I started planning. I didn’t care for married life, but I thought raising a child, that’d be something I could do. Something that wouldn’t get boring.”

His smile is completely lost on James, who continues to observe him intensely. There’s only the width of a table between them, just an arm’s length, but he seems much, much farther than that.

“Did you ever…” James hesitates, drops his gaze to his empty plate for a second before looking up again and finishing. “Did you ever wish you had just left her and not taken me with you?”

“No,” Jim says, the word flat and true. He never regretted it, not when James’ mere existence complicated everything, not when the cries of a teething infant kept him up long past the point of exhaustion, not even when he realized that he couldn’t go on as he had, taunting the Holmes brothers in the open, not if he had any hope of raising James to adulthood.

“Not even when you realized I wasn’t like you?”

Not even then, but Jim has a feeling James wouldn’t believe such an easy answer.

“I was… disappointed,” he admits. “But you were still mine. Still are. Nothing can change that.”

Nothing, and certainly not a certain consulting detective who believes himself much smarter than he really is. Jim’s mouth twists at the thought before he tries to banish Sherlock’s image from his mind again.

“Did you…” James starts, very low, before trying again, even lower. “Do you…”

When the question doesn’t come, Jim tries hard not to let his annoyance pierce through.

“Do I what?”

James takes in a deep breath and lets it out all at once, like that first question about his mother. “Do you love me? Did you, before I disappointed you? Even just a little bit?”

It’s hard to tell what hurts the most, the question itself or the tiny bit of pleading in those last words. It’s even harder for Jim not to choke up as he replies.

“Do you even have to ask?”

James shrugs one shoulder and looks down at his plate again. 

“I spent three years trying to recall even one time when you said it. I couldn’t.”

Of its own accord, Jim’s mouth opens. And closes again without a sound. These aren’t words he ever said lightly. He _has_ said them, but often when he was pretending to be someone he wasn’t.

Often… or always?

He tries to remember saying them to James, but like his son, comes up empty. He must have said it, though. He remembers James saying it to him, so he must have said it back, at the very least.

Didn’t he?

Maybe not; not if he’s to judge by James’ colder eyes as he waits for… what? An explanation? An apology? Three words that, in the end, are just that: words?

“Maybe I didn’t say it when I should have,” he says tightly, “but I showed you. When I took you riding. When I taught you how to play the piano, or how to skate. When I read with you. I showed you in many ways.” Harder, he adds, “Or at least I thought I did.”

After what feels like an eternity, James nods. But what comes out of his mouth doesn’t match the gesture.

“What about when you used your belt?” he asks, his voice entirely void of _anything_ Jim can recognize. “Were you showing me you loved me when you were putting bruises on me?”

Sitting up straight, Jim keeps his closing hands under the table and out of sight.

“I was _teaching_ you. Disciplining one’s children is a form of love.”

James actually laughs at that, but there’s no humor in it. 

“Who taught you that? Your father? The same person who blamed you for killing your mother when you were just a baby?”

The answer is yes.

It’s also much too uncomfortable to be voiced.

Jim never thought about it that way. It was just the normal thing to do. Spare the rod and all that. If he had to do it again…

Would he, though? Could he discipline James today, knowing what he’s been through because Jim made a mistake? If nothing else he should be punished for speaking to Jim on that tone, but the mere thought of it tightens Jim’s throat and loosens his fists.

“I did the best I could,” he offers. It’s not an apology, but it might be the next best thing to it. “The best I knew how to do.”

“I’m sure you did,” James says in that same blank voice again, and it’s all Jim can do not to flinch – not to throw the plate in front of him at the wall.

“May I be excused?”

It can’t end like this, can it? Jim has been trying so hard to make things better between them, he can’t let this conversation end on this particular note.

“Jamie…”

But what can he say, really?

“May I please be excused?” James asks again.

Defeated, Jim nods. He closes his eyes rather than watching James leave the kitchen, though he can’t help but ask, “Answer a question of mine?”

James’ quiet steps stop by the door. Jim opens his eyes again and looks at him, sees the uncertainty there, the wariness. 

“If I’d just showed up at Baker Street and asked you to come home with me, would you have?”

He thinks he knows the answer already, but he’s curious as to whether James would admit to it. 

He doesn’t; not really.

“I came of my own free will, didn’t I?” he says after an aborted gesture, his hand rising toward his face but falling again halfway through. “Just like you said I would. May I be excused now?”

Jim nods again, and acknowledges the truth to himself, however hard it might be. He doesn’t know how to fix this.

And, even if it’s only been two days, he’s not even sure anymore that it can be fixed at all.


	5. Half-Remembered Lullabies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit shorter than usual but it seemed liike a great place to stop.  
> Thank you as always for each and every comment.
> 
> I wrote the other side of the phone call from last chapter, from Sherlock's POV. It's too short to make it a fic on AO3 so it's on my [tumblr](http://prettyvk.tumblr.com/post/109537669892/the-other-side).

That evening, Jim keeps planning, because that, at least, he knows how to do.

Their next home is ready. There’s a piano already waiting there; a good one.

And a fucking violin, too.

He has started researching local schools. There’s nothing he couldn’t teach James himself, but it was always the plan to expose him to other students, teachers, administrative folks so he’d learn to deal with people and manipulate them.

Not that the latter is likely to happen at this point.

Another three days, and they can leave the country. Car, helicopter, boat and plane will be all lined up by then, and Jim is confident that they’ll escape the surveillance Mycroft Holmes set over the country. No mistakes this time, Jim damn well made sure of it.

The last thing they have to get is a passport for James to match one of Jim’s alternate identities. Jim had a couple ready for James, but he suspects Sebastian made use of them.

For a while, he tries to come up with an alias for his son, but nothing feels right. James is James, will always be James, now even more than before.

He goes up to James’ room, knocks once before pushing the door open.

“James, I need you to choose a new… name…”

The hesitation is due to the fact that it takes Jim a few seconds to find his son, sitting in the corner of the room with his feet against the bookshelf and his back to the perpendicular wall. James looks up from the book propped against his knees, a gleam of wariness in his eyes. Jim always hated to see him hide like this, and he knows it.

“I see old habits die hard,” he drawls, leaning against the doorjamb.

He’s not going to snap at James, he tells himself. He’s not. It would just make everything a tiny bit harder and hell knows he doesn’t need that right now.

When James neither moves nor replies, Jim swallows back the sigh that wants to spill from his lips.

“What are you reading?” he asks, keeping his tone as neutral as he can.

James shows him the cover of the book. The Little Prince. Jim feels a small jolt of pleasure. He knew, when he made that video and bought that plush toy, that James wouldn’t have forgotten.

“Did you have it with you these past three years?”

James’ lips twist as though he tasted something bitter.

“Sebastian wouldn’t let me take books when we left. He said it’d slow us down. He bought some for me sometimes when I was good. And took them away if I made too much of a fuss.”

Despite himself, Jim winces. He’s just not getting used to hearing James talk about Sebastian in such a blank tone of voice.

Which is exactly the point, he now realizes.

“Clever,” he murmurs. “Very clever. You keep mentioning him to keep him and what he did to the front of my mind. Is that it?”

James neither confirms nor denies it, and says instead, “I was with him for three years. What else do I have to talk about? Unless you want to hear about Sherlock?”

Jim really, really doesn’t, and James no doubt knows it, but he forces something that might pass for a smile to his lips and says, “Sure. You took him to our home to get that book, then?”

“No. I took him home because I wanted to know if you’d been there. They both said you were dead but I thought maybe you were just faking. Like Sherlock did.”

He shrugs, opening the book again and returning his attention to it.

“May I get some other books to read since you took my e-reader? Sherlock got me a hundred ebooks for Christmas and I’d only read a dozen or so.”

He hadn’t mentioned the device since Jim found it, and Jim is surprised to hear him mention it now. It’s as if he’s ticking off the boxes on a checklist and trying to annoy Jim: sitting in that corner, talking about Sherlock, about the e-reader…

“Do you actually _want_ to be punished?” he asks as he starts to get what game James is playing.

James’ eyes return to him, wary again though unsurprised.

“For what? Asking for something new to read?”

“You keep trying to push me.”

A handful of seconds pass before James replies.

“If you’re going to punish me like you used to, I’d rather know now rather than later.”

‘Like you used to,’ he says. For Jim, no more than a few weeks have passed, but for James it was three years ago. Jim still has trouble wrapping his mind around that.

“What do you want to be called on your new passport?” he asks, going back to his initial question because he has no answer.

James gives him a blank look. He doesn’t care, he says. Jim doesn’t push and leaves the room.

Thirteen. That’s how old Jim was the last time his father laid a hand on him – the last time he dared. Jim made it clear to him if he tried again one of them would not survive the day.

Thirteen. That’s how old James is now. Jim can’t imagine him uttering a threat like that, not today, not next year, maybe not ever. But neither can he see himself raising a hand to him. Not when he’s seen the pictures Sebastian sent the accountant to prove James was still with him. He knows – intimately – how hard Sebastian could hit.

Back in the den, he sends in the passport order. He decides on Antoine as a first name; like the author of The Little Prince.

*

Three hours later, Jim is seated at the piano, a half empty glass of scotch perched on the edge of it. He’s running through basic exercises, willing his fingers to move as quickly, as accurately as they once did. He still has a long way to go.

Pausing after another missed note, he takes a sip from his glass and catches a shadow from the corner of his eye. As quietly as Jim has been playing, James’ bedroom is just above him and he must have heard.

“It’s late,” he says without turning to James. “You should be in bed.”

Should a thirteen year old have a bedtime? Jim can’t manage to care right now.

Rather than returning to his bedroom, James comes to the piano, sitting down at the very end of the bench.

“May I ask another question?”

“Go ahead,” Jim says tiredly, and lays his hands on the keys to start his exercises again.

For a moment, James is silent, watching Jim run through one set of perfect chords. The second set is not so perfect anymore. The third one makes Jim want to scream.

“When you were in a coma… I mean, after you woke up… You said you had to learn to walk again and other things. Are you… are you all right, now? Or are you still relearning some things?”

Jim drowns a snort in his glass before setting it down again.

“You’re asking me if I’m brain damaged. You’ve heard me play. You tell me.”

“You hadn’t played in a long time. I made plenty of mistakes when I started again, too.”

Throwing him a sideways glance, Jim wonders if his son is actually trying to comfort him. Why would he do that now, when hours ago he was trying to antagonize him? 

“But you’re… different,” James continues, more hesitantly. “Not just the way you sound but… I don’t know. Or maybe I forgot what you’re like. Or I only remembered some things. Sometimes it’s hard to remember the good things.”

Jim says nothing, mostly because he has no idea what to say. Is he really different? Or is he acting differently because James has grown up, much more than three years should account for? He couldn’t say. He doesn’t _feel_ different, but if he truly is brain damaged, would he even realize anything changed?

He turns a little more toward James, and watches him open the familiar book he’s holding in his lap. He pulls a picture out from between the pages and places it ever so carefully on the piano in front of Jim. On it, a beaming James sits astride his horse right after a competition, Jim standing next to him.

“I didn’t just take books when I went home,” James whispers. “I took this, too. When I was with Se—when I was away, when I was really sad or unhappy, I’d think of that day, because that was the best day in my whole life. Before they even told us the rankings, you said… you said you were proud of me. And I was so, so happy I made you proud at least for a little while.”

Jim looks at that picture and barely recognizes himself. He looks just as happy as James does, and there’s no pretending there; no need to pretend, or play an act. He remembers how happy James was. And in hindsight, yes, this was the happiest he’d ever seen his son.

“You do,” he says, choking a little on the words. “Make me proud. You still do.”

“Do I? You said I disappoint you.”

The muffled pain in those words echoes like an agonized cry. Jim gets it, suddenly. This is why James has been pushing at him, antagonizing him, all but taunting him since dinner. He started after Jim admitted he was disappointed, as though to give him more reasons to be. But that’s not how Jim meant it.

“I didn’t say I’m disappointed in you,” he corrects James. “I’m disappointed in the situation because I had this grand plan for what things would be like when you’d be a grown up, how we’d work together, but I never stopped to wonder whether you’d want that. I assumed you’d be like me, because that’s who I wanted you to be. But you aren’t me, not any more than I am my father. And I _am_ proud of you.”

While James doesn’t say anything, his posture shifts, his shoulders loosening a little.

“Okay,” he says, and it sounds like a thank you.

Jim moves the picture, propping it on the sheet music stand, and starts another round of exercises that doesn’t sound too bad. In the middle of it, James’ voice rises again, no louder than a whisper, almost drowned by the notes.

“Sometimes I have trouble sleeping. Bad dreams. And it helps when… when someone plays music for me.”

Jim grimaces, imagining Sherlock playing for _his son_ , lulling him to sleep like Jim used to, years and years ago, with half-remembered lullabies hummed or sung ever so quietly in Gaelic.

“If I go to bed now,” James continues just as softly, “will you please play for me? Not exercises. Real songs.”

Jim’s fingers freeze on the keys.

“You’ve heard me,” he says, a little gruff. “I’m not very good anymore.”

“It’s okay. You’re good enough.”

And how could Jim say no?


	6. Agony

Jim wakes up from less than pleasant dreams to slip into excruciating agony.

With a groan, he rolls onto his stomach and raises a hand to the back of his head, to the slight indentation from which the pain radiates through his skull. He presses against it, as though simple touch might help. It doesn’t. It never does.

It happened every few days after he first woke up at the clinic. The doctor had theories about it, but no useful treatment other than simple painkillers. It’s been happening less and less frequently since he left the clinic, but every now and then, the pain returns, debilitating.

Long minutes pass before he manages to get out of bed. He stumbles to the bathroom and blindly reaches for the paracetamol. He swallows double the dose dry and for a moment stares at himself in the mirror until the image clears up. The pain, on the other hand, only pretends to dull.

He only removed his jacket before falling into bed last night – or rather, early this morning. Changing into fresh clothes now is beyond him, and he’s still in his rumpled shirt and trousers when he makes his way downstairs to look for coffee, tea, or possibly scotch – anything as long as it distracts him from the pain. 

The kettle is still whistling softly. Tea it is, then, with a generous splash of liquid gold. Taking slow sips, he walks over to the den, and tries to think of all the things he needs to work on today. It’s hard to think at all with fire pulsing through his brain.

He stops on the threshold and blinks several times, almost expecting the image in front of him to resolve into something different. But no; it doesn’t change. James continues to kneel by the coffee table, Jim’s files spread out in front of him. Did he leave them out in the open last night? He meant to put them away, but he must have forgotten. 

Sebastian’s file is there, the autopsy pictures in full display. James’ file is next to it, open over the psychiatrist’s report. Sherlock’s file remains closed. And in his hands, James holds the surveillance file with two months’ worth of pictures.

“What are you doing?” Jim asks, his voice gruff from both sleep and pain.

James becomes very still. A handful of seconds pass before he slowly turns his head to look at Jim.

“Why do you have this?” He indicates the file in his hands. “You said you’d leave him alone but there are pictures from just yesterday in here. Why?”

“I’m just keeping an eye on things, nothing more.”

Striding over to the table, Jim closes James’ file first, then Sebastian’s, stacking them in a neat pile. When he holds his hand out, he expects James to surrender the last one, but all he gets is a frown.

“Why do you need to keep an eye on him if you’re leaving him alone?”

“Because he’s not going to give up that easily, is he?” Jim snaps, and grabs the file right out of James’ hands.

A few pictures escape and scatter on the coffee table. One of them is shot through the window of Sherlock’s flat and shows him, more shadow than anything else, tugging at his hair with both hands.

“He spent three years destroying everything I built, and to top it off he took you, he took _my_ son, and gave you his name. He thought he’d won it all. Of course he’s not going to accept losing without a fight. And I’m not going to let him have you.”

James stares at him, his expression utterly blank.

“Is that what this is for you?” he asks. “A game?”

Jim snorts and sits down on the sofa, fighting the urge to touch the back of his head again. He can feel his blood pounding in his ears. 

“If you think it’s different for him—”

“It was never a game for Sherlock,” James interrupts as he gets to his feet. “I wasn’t a pawn or… or a prize, or whatever it is you’re saying.”

“Don’t be naïve,” Jim mutters, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. “Of course he sees it as a game. Everything’s always been a game between us. Why else would Sherlock fucking Holmes want anything to do with a child? He’s not exactly ‘father of the year’ material.”

And maybe it’s the wrong thing to say, the wrong topic to talk about with James, but damn it if Jim can think straight right now. He should have stayed in bed. Or he should go back to bed.

Or get his gun and finish the job so the agony will _stop_ once and for all.

He couldn’t say how much time passes before he opens his eyes again, but he’s fairly certain James hasn’t said a word the entire time. He looks at him and James stares back, his eyes dark, lifeless.

“What?” Jim practically growls.

James shakes his head. 

“He thought you were dead. He was completely convinced of it. So even if he played games with you before, why would he keep playing against a dead man? He’d already won. I wasn’t… I wasn’t part of it. Not for him.”

“You don’t know him like I do,” Jim says. “It’s all a game.”

“I know him better than you do,” James shoots back. “I lived with him for five months. And he didn’t have to keep me. He could have sent me to some foster parents or something. Mycroft told him he should. But he kept me. He adopted me. He had no reason to do it, and it complicated his life, but he did it and it wasn’t a game! And you, you promised to leave him alone if I came to you and you still have him followed. You lied to me!”

The tirade comes out without a pause and leaves James red in the face. If anything, it confirms what Jim thought. If it’s a game, Sherlock won’t give up trying to get James back. And if it’s not a game, if he does care that much for a child who isn’t his, he won’t give up either.

“I didn’t lie,” he says, his tone growing colder and his eyes never lifting from James’. “I said no one else would die. I didn’t say I wouldn’t keep them under surveillance.”

“But why do you even _need_ surveillance if you don’t plan to hurt anyone? Stop lying to me!”

The question, Jim could accept. After all, he did tell James he’d answer any question. This is not the best of times, not with his skull about to split open, but he could still give a proper answer.

The accusation, on the other hand…

He’s on his feet before he knows it. He doesn’t realize he’s thrown his mug until it shatters against the wall, sending porcelain shards and tea across the room. James flinches and his eyes grow wider.

“I have not said a word to you that wasn’t true,” Jim says in a low, slow voice. “And you will _not_ call me a liar ever again. Do you hear me?”

He can read the question in James’ eyes, clear as day. _What if I do? What will you do, then?_

He hopes with everything he has in him that James won’t ask, because he has no idea how he would answer, no idea what he would do – and that scares him.

James, small mercies, does not ask. He offers a bland, “Yes, sir,” that betrays nothing of what he might think.

“Your room,” Jim says, still as quietly. “Go there. _Stay_ there. You’re not to come out until I say you can. Tell me you understand what I just said.”

“I understand.”

Jim flicks his eyes to the door. James walks out, his steps just a little faster than usual. It’s not until Jim hears the sound of a door upstairs closing more abruptly than absolutely needed that he realizes the pain is gone.

Fury, on the other hand, remains.

Not one word. He hasn’t said one word to James that was anything less than the truth – and this is what he gets for his trouble. Blind loyalty to a man James has known for five months, and mistrust toward his own father.

If James thinks he’s a liar, what’s the point of holding on to the truth?

With shaky hands, he retrieves his phone. One call, and two men are on their way to keep guard outside. He goes to his room, changes clothes, and leaves without once glancing at James’ closed door. Only when he gets to Bart’s – after taking every precaution not to be spotted by anything resembling a camera – does he send the text he composed on the way.

_Come and play._  
_You know where._  
_No pets or big brothers allowed._  
_JM_

*

Three years. Jim still can’t wrap his mind around it. London looks exactly the same from Bart’s roof. And Jim hasn’t changed either, has he?

Neither has Sherlock. He comes out onto the roof with his coat billowing around him, just like in Jim’s memories – his last memories before his long sleep.

Jim watches him as Sherlock looks around, finding Jim immediately but still searching for something, someone who isn’t there.

“Where is he?” he asks as he takes long strides toward Jim and stops beyond arm’s reach. “Is he okay?”

Jim ignores the question. He steps just a little closer, close enough that he has to look up at those blue eyes darkened by deep circles.

“Explain something to me, Sherlock,” he says in a mild voice. “What gave you the right to take my son?”

Sherlock blinks, then sneers. 

“Was I supposed to send him into foster care instead?”

Shrugging, Jim tilts his head to one side. 

“Why not? It’s not as though you have any idea how to raise a child.”

“And you do?” Sherlock’s tone turns more scathing with each word. “Beating a child when he makes mistakes, telling him about your work, putting a gun in his hands before he is even ten, and let’s not forget having a murderer and a rapist around him. Yes, they all seem like excellent parenting decisions.”

Jim could almost thank him for making this easier. He does no such thing, though, and pulls the gun from his pocket, much like he did last time they were here. This time, however, he doesn’t stick it in his mouth. This time, it’s not loaded with a blank. And when he presses the muzzle to Sherlock’s forehead, when he flips the safety off, he’s not pretending anymore. Sherlock doesn’t move, but the way he swallows hard gives away that he understands they’re done playing.

“Give me one reason,” Jim murmurs, “just one reason why I shouldn’t put a bullet in your brain right now.”

Twice, Sherlock’s mouth opens and closes. The third time, words finally come out.

“He’ll know,” he says calmly, and clever him for figuring out that saying James’ name right now would be a very, very bad idea. “He’ll figure it out, whether it’s tonight, in two days or in two years. And he won’t forgive you for it. He could forgive you for trying to kill yourself, but not for killing me and you’d lose him for good.” After a brief pause, he adds, “Not that it will matter much because John will shoot you dead before I hit the ground.”

With a light snort, Jim presses the gun a little harder against Sherlock’s forehead. His finger is still on the trigger when he glances toward the door to the staircase; it’s open just enough to show the barrel of a gun.

“Can’t say I’m surprised,” Jim says, before calling out louder. “Come on out, Johnny-Boy. This concerns you too, doesn’t it? After all, you three have been playing at being a nice little family.”

John Watson does come out, a gun pointing at Jim the entire time. A very familiar gun, too.

“Oh, and look at that,” Jim says with a smile that bares his teeth. “That’s James’ gun, isn’t it? I knew that’s what he was looking for when he went back home. Clever boy.”

“Usually very clever, yes,” Watson says, both hands holding up the gun steadily toward Jim as he stops a few steps to the side. “Not so clever when he put this gun to his own head and had to be talked out of pulling the trigger.”

Jim’s forced smile disappears in the time of a blink and he glares at Watson, only a second away from shifting the gun to him – or from firing.

“Liar!” he practically spits.

Watson remains unfazed. “Why would I lie about that?”

“He wouldn’t do that!”

Almost against his own will, he glances at Sherlock, hoping to catch a clue, a sign, anything to prove that Watson is lying. He gets the opposite.

“He didn’t pull the trigger,” Sherlock says, and although he’s trying to sound detached, there’s a quiet hitch in his words. “But he was ready to. Just to show you what it feels like to have someone you love choose death over you. And he might still do it if he got upset enough. Who’s looking over him right now? Any weapons he might have access to? Are you sure he’ll still be there when you go home?”

There’s no gun in the house, not when Jim’s gun is in his shaky hand, but in less than two seconds Jim can come up with twenty three way James might kill himself.

Seven of them without even leaving his room, as he was ordered not to.

“Shut up!” he snarls. “He came back to me! He chose me, Sherlock. Me!”

For a man with a gun pointed at his head by someone who’s growing more and more agitated, Sherlock sounds much too composed.

“How was that a choice?” he asks. “He wanted to keep Molly safe. And me. And John. Remind me of the definition of blackmail?”

Jim pushes the gun just a little harder against that thick head, hard enough that Sherlock takes a stumbling step back. Jim lets him, lowers the gun and flicks the safety on. Watson doesn’t react immediately, not until Sherlock gestures for him to lower his gun as well, and it’s clear he only does so grudgingly.

“I’ll tell you what blackmail is. Blackmail is me walking out of here with no one stopping me, no one trying to follow me. Not you, not Johnny-Boy, and not Mycroft’s all-seeing cameras.”

He doesn’t bother voicing a ‘or else’. There’s only one thing at stakes, here.

“You won’t hurt him,” Sherlock says at once, his eyes narrowing.

Jim doesn’t blink, doesn’t smile, doesn’t put anything resembling emotions in his words. 

“Are you so sure about that?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Sherlock says, and he sounds anything but. “He’s not a little kid you can scare into hiding in his room anymore. He’s not going to take any more beatings.”

“They weren’t beatings!” Jim shouts.

If anything, Sherlock grows even more calm in the face of Jim’s loss of control, but it’s a cold calm, ice chiming in each word and echoing endlessly.

“Right. Not beatings. And what Moran did – what your _boyfriend_ did to him, that wasn’t rape, of course not. And the cigarette burns on his chest, those are just marks of affection. And the night terrors he has—”

Of its own accord, Jim’s arm rises again, the gun once more pointing at Sherlock’s head. At the same second, Watson swears and raises his gun again as well.

“Shut up,” Jim growls. “Shut up or I swear, Sherlock. I swear…”

“What do you swear exactly? That you’ll mess up his life even more? No need to swear, you’ve already done enough damage to last a lifetime. Go ahead, kill me. Let John kill you. Finish destroying every last bit of hope and love in that boy. Show him it’s useless to care for other people, to trust them. Isn’t that the lesson you wanted him to learn from the start?”

In the silence that follows, the click of the safety seems almost as loud as a gunshot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter left after this one, i think.


	7. Liar

Jim gets home as quickly as he can, no longer concerned by cameras. 

Seven ways without leaving his room. Possibly eight.

The guards start to report but he can already see from their demeanor that nothing happened – or at least, they didn’t hear or see anything.

He drops his coat in the entrance, barely aware that he misses the hook and that it falls to the floor. He couldn’t care less right now. 

He climbs the steps three at a time and enters James’ room without a knock, holding his breath, hoping—

He stifles a relieved sigh when he sees that James is safe and sound. Jim doesn’t even care that he’s in that damn corner again, his arms around his legs and his cheek resting on his knees. If the intrusion startled him, James doesn’t show it. He doesn’t move, merely tenses and watches Jim warily.

“Get up,” Jim says, belatedly adding a, “please,” that still sounds like a demand.

James obeys without a word, his movements slow but without hesitation. He stands there, waiting, and it’s clear that he’s not expecting anything good. He’s probably right.

Leaning back against the wall, Jim crosses his arms over his chest.

“Show me the scars.”

A blink is the extent of James’ response.

“The scars Sebastian burned on you,” Jim says when a moment has passed and James still hasn’t moved. “Show me.”

Another blink, and this time James’ eyes narrow.

“How do you know about that?” he asks, his voice shaking just a bit. “There’s only two people who know.”

“Then you can take a guess about who told me. Show me.”

James still doesn’t move, except for his head snapping up.

“You talked to Sherlock? Did you hurt him?”

The question is predictable enough that Jim snorts.

“If I say no you’re not going to believe me so what’s the point? Now _show me_. I’m not asking you again.”

Finally, James does as he is told. He loosens his tie first and drops it on his bed. His hands are shaking when he starts undoing the buttons of his shirt. It takes longer than it should – long enough that Jim gets impatient.

“I only want to see,” he snaps.

“Why?” James asks, tugging the shirt out of his trousers. “If you know what he did, why do you need to see?”

“Because if I can lie, so can Sherlock.”

And that, of course, is all it takes. James’ hero can’t be sullied like this, can he?

James doesn’t remove anything else, but he tugs his undershirt upward, exposing pale skin and the darker circles that form a large, sinuous line.

No, not a line, Jim realizes at once. A letter.

He shuts his eyes tight, clenches his teeth, and brings up again the memory of his knife slicing Sebastian’s flesh.

Better this memory than another one; one that involves glowing cigarette tips, burning skin, and the slightly sickening smell that comes with it.

When he opens his eyes, James is already buttoning his shirt again, but his gaze is on Jim, less wary than curious.

“Did he… did he ever burn you?” James asks, not much louder than a murmur.

Jim’s mouth twitches toward a smile; it feels like a grimace.

“No, he did not. He wouldn’t have dared.”

Jim made it clear to Sebastian, very early in their acquaintance and in no uncertain terms, that ephemeral bruises were fine as long as they could be hidden by clothing, but that leaving permanent marks on Jim would result in the removal of fingers.

The reverse was never true, however, and Jim—

“ _You_ burned _him_.”

It’s not accusation in James’ words or his eyes. It’s downright horror.

Jim could say it wasn’t the same. He could say Sebastian cursed him in three languages after the first burn on the inside of his wrist, but lit a new cigarette himself when Jim said he was going to mark him with a J. He could say he never thought, not in his wildest nightmares, that Sebastian might ever do the same to James. But does any of it really matter?

Sherlock accused him of keeping ‘a murderer and a rapist’ near James. He was right, that’s obvious in hindsight, but that was never how Jim thought of him. He always saw Sebastian as a wild animal, always prided himself on taming him.

Apparently, there’s no such thing as a tamed tiger. But Jim isn’t the one who got mauled for his arrogance.

“Did you?” James persists, still waiting for an answer.

Lying is useless. He already knows, he just wants to hear Jim say it. Besides, even if James believes otherwise, Jim hasn’t lied to him yet, nor does he intend to. Not until the end.

“Yes,” Jim says, and somehow it sounds like he’s admitting something else altogether – admitting putting those scars on his son’s skin himself.

And in a way, he did. James doesn’t say so in words, but the silence that weighs on the room is full of accusations. There’s no jury to rig here; Jim has already been found guilty.

With nothing left to lose, Jim might as well ask the second question Sherlock left him with. 

“I’ve been told you put a gun to your own head. Is that true?”

Having tucked his shirt back in his trousers, James picks up his tie again. He considers it for a moment but doesn’t put it back on. Instead, he sets it on the bed again and sits next to it.

With a tie was way number four out of seven.

“Tell me why you burned Sebastian,” he says coolly, “and I’ll tell you if it was true.”

Jim already knows it was; Sherlock isn’t that good of an actor. He wants to hear James say it, just like James wanted to hear him a moment ago.

“Because I could,” Jim says. “Because I knew he’d let me. And because I wanted him to remember who owned him.”

A flinch, a frown, and James’ gaze drops briefly to his own wrist.

“The J inside his arm?” he asks. “You made that?”

Jim nods. He did. Years ago, one day when he was particularly bored and he’d caught Sebastian smoking in the Knightsbridge house after he’d been told not to. The first burn was punishment, but as soon as he saw how pretty this mark looked on Sebastian’s skin, he knew there’d be more.

“Your turn. Why did you put a gun to your own head?”

No more ‘did you’, but straight to ‘why.’ He was going to get there eventually; the sooner this conversation ends, the better.

For a little while, James plucks absently at the fabric of his comforter, though his eyes never leave Jim.

“I don’t know why,” he finally says. “I didn’t plan it. I was upset and it just sort of… happened.”

It actually makes much more sense to Jim than it should. He’s no stranger himself to things that just happen when he’s upset.

“Why did you go talk to Sherlock?”

Case in point.

“Because I wanted to kill him.”

James’ shock, written plain as day on his face, is no surprise, and neither is his stammered question.

“Did… Did you?”

“No.”

He holds James’ gaze, wondering if he’s going to be called a liar again despite his order, earlier today, that James never do that again – wondering if James, whether he calls him a liar or not, will believe him.

“Why didn’t you?” James asks hesitantly. “If that’s what you wanted to do, why didn’t you kill him?”

“I told you I wouldn’t. And he told me about the gun to your head so I decided coming home to check on you might be a better idea than letting Watson kill me. Have you ever tried to kill yourself before?”

The change of topic is abrupt, meant to catch James off-guard, and it does. The way he shifts before stilling again, his slow blink, the catch in his throat… When he answers, he speaks the truth, and Jim can breathe freely for the first time since he left that damn roof.

“I thought about it sometimes when Sebastian… when he was worse than usual. But I never tried, not until…”

And with a few more words, he steals Jim’s breath again.

“I don’t want anyone else to die because of me.”

Three years in Sebastian’s hands, and James didn’t do more than think about it.

One week with Jim back in his life, and he came close to acting on it.

Jim nods once, and it’s as much an answer to James’ words as it is meant for himself.

“I have work to do,” he says as he pushes away from the wall and turns to the door. “It’s past lunch time. Help yourself to the leftovers in the fridge.”

“Yes sir,” floats behind him as he leaves the room, but they’re much less benign words that stay with him as he tries to lose himself into plans and preparations.

*

Hours pass before James comes to the den, though he doesn’t walk in and remains on the threshold.

“I was going to have dinner. Do you want me to warm up food for you?”

Dinner? Is it that late already? Jim glances at one of the three phones on the table next to his laptop. It’s even later than the time they usually have dinner.

“No,” he says, slamming the laptop shut and jumping to his feet. “Go put a tie back on. We’re going out.”

James’ surprise is obvious, but he does as he is told. When he comes back down to join Jim in the hallway, his tie is on, knotted perfectly, his suit jacket buttoned over it. Jim hands him his coat and they walk out together. A cab is already waiting.

*

James’ French when he orders from the menu is absolutely flawless, and Jim tells himself that he deserves a reward for it. Once the white-gloved waiter has stepped away, he takes a sip of wine and says, “I brought your mother here, once.”

Immediately, James looks up, his eyes wide, his attention captured. He doesn’t ask questions; he doesn’t need to. They’re all on his face.

“We’d come to London for a long weekend. She’d never been here and she wanted to see everything. With just three days, that meant we spent our time running from place to place. But we stopped running on Saturday night, I took her here, and I proposed.”

Down on one knee and everything, with the other guests applauding politely as she agreed, and the maitre d’ offering them champagne cups along with his well-wishes. It was all completely, perfectly, sickeningly _normal_. She adored it. And Jim told himself it might not be so bad to keep to this path after all if he’d managed to do this one thing.

The anecdote seems to enchant James. He spends the rest of the meal asking about that trip to London, whether it was Jim’s first time here too – and little by little, he slips in questions about his mother, too.

Jim answers it all. By the time they leave, James is still smiling.

*

It’s only when they get home again that James asks what Jim guesses has been on his mind for a while.

“What if we were seen on CCTV?”

“Don’t worry about that. I made arrangements. And it’s our last night here anyway.”

“Oh. Okay.”

He doesn’t ask where they’re going. He never did. It’s like it doesn’t matter, like it wouldn’t change a thing for him.

He’s right about that.

*

Jim wakes him up early, and they head back to London. They go to the Natural History Museum, though they bypass the exhibits and go straight to the ice rink. James’ smile returns. Jim’s balance isn’t quite what it should be, but he gives it his best try and they end up having a good time.

The London Eye is next. James can’t seem to get enough of the view. Maybe he’s trying to burn London in his memory. To Jim, what’s outside isn’t quite as interesting as what is inside the private capsule.

Lunch consists of fish and chips eaten while strolling around – James’ idea. Jim had other plans, but he goes along with it.

If James was happy so far, it’s nothing compared to the sheer joy he exudes when Jim takes him to the centre where he learned to ride. It’s not as modern as the one he’s frequented recently, but some of the horses he first rode are there. Jim hasn’t ridden with him for years, but today, he does.

As night falls, they go home to get their things. There isn’t much to pack, and they’re soon on their way again.

They’re almost there before James recognizes the street outside his window. His head whirls toward Jim so fast it’s a wonder he doesn’t give himself whiplash.

“You’re a liability.” Jim has thought about what he’d say all day. The words don’t come out any more easily for it. “A weakness I can’t afford to keep. I used to justify it with the idea that once you grew up you’d be the best ally I could ever want, but you’re never going to work with me. We both know that.”

The cab stops. Jim makes it a point not to look past James and out the window. He doesn’t want to see, doesn’t want to know if someone is already waiting. He knows they are.

“What… what are you saying?” James murmurs.

He looks afraid, but afraid of what? Afraid that he already understands what Jim is saying or afraid to hope?

“You’re a liability,” Jim says again. “And I can’t start over if I have liabilities holding me back. So I turned you into an asset. I met with Sherlock to see what he’d give me for you. What he’d get his brother to give me. Blank slate, safe passage… Anything I asked for. Everything I needed for a clean start.”

The cabbie is getting impatient, so Jim shoves a few bills at him and asks him to get the carry on suitcase out of the trunk. When he turns to James again, it’s to get the breath knocked out of him when James throws his arms around Jim’s neck and holds on very, very tightly.

“Liar,” James breathes.

Jim holds back a laugh and hugs his son, the way he hadn’t done in years even before the coma. The way he’ll never do again.

“I’ll see you again, right?” James asks, still not letting go.

“Maybe some day. I won’t be coming back to England for a while.”

“But you’ll call? Or... or… write to me? Text me?”

Jim didn’t intend to – didn’t think James would want him to – but if he does…

“Get your phone back,” he says. “I’ll try to text when I have time. But you can write whenever you want. You’ve got my number. And let me know if you tire of being a Holmes.”

He’s not going to, Jim already knows that. As gently as he can, he pushes James back and disentangles himself from his arms. Reaching inside his jacket, he pulls out the picture James left on the piano two days ago and tries to give it back, but James doesn’t take it.

“Don’t you want to keep it?” James asks.

Jim shakes his head. “You have it. You said it was your favorite day.”

Jim’s, too, or at least one of them, right up there with the day he first held his infant son. He doesn’t need pictures, not when every detail is engraved in his mind.

Need or not, he _will_ have pictures. Nothing intrusive, nothing that will get the surveillance noticed, but every once in a while. It’s already set up.

James takes the picture, looks at it, then at Jim. Are his eyes more shiny than they ought to be, or is that a trick of the overhead light?

“You should go.” Jim clears his throat. “My plane’s waiting.”

He never did like goodbyes, and this is already taking much longer than he expected. Another hug; this one is thankfully much shorter. James finally opens the passenger door, but before stepping out of the cab he turns one last time to Jim.

“Goodbye, Dad.”

If he tries to speak, Jim knows he’ll choke, so he just nods and looks away. A door just opened behind James and someone is coming out.

When James shuts the car door, Jim tells the cabbie to drive. He closes his eyes and doesn’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for coming along on this strange ride, and thank you for the comments along the way, they are always much appreciated.


End file.
